HELPLESS | KLAUS MIKAELSON

PROLOGUE

My story begins in the year 1809, you see I may have been born in 1794 but up until that year I was simply a ghost going through the motions of a good daughter. I would sing and play piano and learn languages, read poetry and learn to dance just as was expected of me by my father so yes 1794 may have been the year I took my first breath but 1809 was the year I truly came to life.

That day I remember was a sunny one in New Orleans, especially hot and it turned into a muggy night, so uncomfortable that I couldn't sleep. I had laid there in my bed for hours upon hours, tossing and turning trying to force sleep to drag me into its deep abyss but it simply wouldn't take me into its grasp and so at what must have been after midnight I stood from my bed with a huff of vexation and I walked from my room not even thinking to slide on a robe over my cotton shift, perhaps that was terribly improper of me but with sweat beading on my skin I hadn't even the mind to care. With a gentle placement of my feet on the cool wood flooring in my home I slid out into the darkness of the night, the grass cool and soothing as I walked my way towards the lake.

That night with the moon casting an almost mystical glow over the lake was the first time I ever saw him and the night that my heart began to truly beat for the first time. There he sat, his bare feet resting in the water creating soft ripples, his face peaceful. I'd seen him before, working the plantation fields around my home but I'd never allowed myself to truly just stop and look at him, I hadn't had the heart to because I'd always known that if I'd just allowed myself to look, at him, at any of those innocent people then I wouldn't be able to stop myself from screaming until my lungs were empty of air. But I'd also always known that my screaming, my pleas, my sorrow would serve as no use to anybody, nobody would listen to me, nobody would truly hear me, nobody would care because what was I? Simply a young girl and in this cruel world girls are nothing, nothing more than property owned by their fathers used as bargaining chips and pawns. No, nothing I could say or do would make any difference except in maybe how my father treated me and so I didn't do anything, I didn't look, I didn't scream, I didn't try to help. Until that night, that night I looked and my mind screamed and my heart began to beat.

But please don't be fooled by the beauty of that night because while it may have been the true beginning of my life it was also the beginning of my death. He was the beginning of my death as I was his. I'd known in that moment as I stood and stared at him that I could never have him, I was the daughter of the governor, the daughter of the man that called this beautiful man his property as though the colour of his skin determined that he was worth less than any other person with a beating heart and blood that ran red, I was the white daughter of the governor and this beautiful man... well he was black, a slave and so it could never come to be, we could never come to be, or at least maybe we shouldn't have, maybe things would have been better that way. Maybe then we would both still be living, or our hearts would be beating at least, he would still be working the fields and I would still be playing my part as the perfect daughter, yes maybe it would have been better that way but alas we can never turn back time we can only keep moving forward until our time is up.

That night was the beginning of what would become a year long affair, an affair that began with timidness before it bloomed into great passion. When I was with him I felt immortal, as though nothing could touch us or what we had, nobody could take away our sweet kisses, it felt as though what we had would last forever but it didn't, it couldn't, we made mistakes, stupid mistakes, we got carried away, too brave, too fast. Things soon came to a screeching halt and it was only then that allowed myself to scream. Our end came in the form of pain and sorrow and heartbreak as the gun in my fathers hand went boom and the blood pooled from my lovers chest, as my belly grew round and from my lovers death came a new life that I vowed to protect until I couldn't any longer.

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